Surprised no one mentioned Irvine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine,_California
New neighborhoods are quite nice, e.g. https://www.irvinepacific.com/homes/eastwood-village
Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
231–240 of 384 posts
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#232Is this pure vaporware? It seems scammy to me. Initially when I first saw the page, I figure it was some virtual community. All the computer-generated graphics looked like some version of Second Life. (If that is stilla thing). It says "Coming to Tempe, Arizona in 2022" "Located at 2025 E Apache Blvd, Tempe, AZ 85281" In Google maps it looks like it has a long way to go before it is finished. https://www.google.com/m…
There's a tremendous amount of building happening in Phoenix, because people keep moving here driving home prices up. I would almost guarantee these rents will be much higher once they open.
It looks like everyone who puts down a deposit is getting on a waiting list to rent at market rate next summer (maybe later).
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#233I live in a master planned community (Daybreak, Utah), and while you can definitely scoff at the building quality (state of things everywhere right now, it's all done fast and with low quality materials), it's been fantastic, especially during the pandemic. The whole neighborhood is designed to be walkable, with parks, pools, trails, train stations, grocery stores and restaurants (added in the later phases, which are…
The shared makerspace seems like a neighborhood level thing. There's all sorts of services / hobbies that make more sense to be neighborhood based instead of nationally based. Tools and workshops are like that. The biggest issue with tools/workshops is liability. Someone's going to lose a finger, or a rotary tool will pull out their hair / a piece of their scalp... (even with all the safety precautions, its going to…
Liability is not a problem. If people get hurt using tools, it’s almost always either entirely their fault, or some rare and random case of very bad luck. Either way, you can have people sign 50 liability waivers before allowing them to touch anything, and buy liability insurance (paid for by member fees).
No, the real problem is not idiots hurting themselves, but rather them hurting tools. Many tools are easy to damage or destroy through misuse, which can be very costly. If people don’t own the tools themselves, they have much less incentive to take good care of them. All your cutting implements will be perpetually dull, for example, unless you hire someone to keep everything in a good order.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
In most American cities the bus schedules are like every 15-20 minutes and buses arrive at a near random distribution over that time. So even if traffic is so bad that driving is consistently 40 minutes, the bus-to-stop-to-bus trip is really anywhere from 40-80 minutes depending on your luck. I think people really value being able to estimate their commute and buses add a lot of variance.
That's an entirely self inflicted problem. Just run the busses every 5 or 10 minutes, and have twice as many busses.
In Seattle, a typical local bus trip costs the transit company around $10, while the ticket costs around $3. Running twice as many buses would result in cost of something like $18-20 per ride, which would make it require even more subsidies than it already receives.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#235Founder here. Great to see the excitement people have for Culdesac and for Culdesac Tempe. Our vision is to build the first car-free city in the US, starting with the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US. Join our waitlist at culdesac.com. We open next year! If you want to visit in the meantime, drop me a note. Hiring-wise, we're hiring in Tempe or remote. Our top hiring prio is to lead product de…
Welcome to HN. Couple of thoughts; first, it’s kinda weird for you to introduce yourself as a ‘founder’ - I’ve been around developers and real estate all my life, and I’ve never heard anyone use that term to describe what they do. Makes me wonder if you see this as more of a housing subscription service than a community? Which leads to my second thought - what’s the thought process behind this being a rental-only thi…
Not sure if you saw this, but Culdesac is a YC company (S18), which probably explains the “founder” nomenclature.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#236Founder here. Great to see the excitement people have for Culdesac and for Culdesac Tempe. Our vision is to build the first car-free city in the US, starting with the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US. Join our waitlist at culdesac.com. We open next year! If you want to visit in the meantime, drop me a note. Hiring-wise, we're hiring in Tempe or remote. Our top hiring prio is to lead product de…
Hi, love the idea! Two quick points:
1. At least to me the name Culdesac is strongly/exclusively associated with suburbs, which is really the opposite experience of what your target market wants. I almost didn't click to learn more.
2. It'd be wonderful if the local businesses in the community were owned/operated by people who lived in it. Community is more than just living in proximity, its also the investment people put into the shared experience, the emergent behavior/ideas/infra, and the adaptability to changes over time. Having lived in a master-planned community once (Irvine), it was so corporate and top-down it felt both stale and even vaguely menacing, like being a hamster in a cage rather than a part of an organic and dynamic whole. I hope this is not that model just with less cars.
Good luck on the build out!
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#237Founder here. Great to see the excitement people have for Culdesac and for Culdesac Tempe. Our vision is to build the first car-free city in the US, starting with the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US. Join our waitlist at culdesac.com. We open next year! If you want to visit in the meantime, drop me a note. Hiring-wise, we're hiring in Tempe or remote. Our top hiring prio is to lead product de…
Thanks for posting. I've been following you for the past year or so eagerly awaiting updates on your development. [CityBeautiful](https://www.youtube.com/c/CityBeautiful) sent out a survey today asking what interesting topics he should cover next. I suggested he reaches out to you connect and produce a video about the project. I think you should do the same. I think its a great opportunity to get exposure. Especially from a YouTuber that has a lot of my respect.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#238How about noise and crowdedness? Everything look (from the picture) so close together, if there are too many people and stuff, things will get messy. Not to mention when there are outdoor activities like musical performances.
I like the concept, I'm just worried when it's over capacity.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#239I live in a master planned community (Daybreak, Utah), and while you can definitely scoff at the building quality (state of things everywhere right now, it's all done fast and with low quality materials), it's been fantastic, especially during the pandemic. The whole neighborhood is designed to be walkable, with parks, pools, trails, train stations, grocery stores and restaurants (added in the later phases, which are…
I know I’m an outlier but, in a city I feel generally safer riding on the road in traffic than on dedicated lanes and paths. In traffic with cars, everyone knows the rules, has the opportunity to see and use signals, and has regulated safety standards.
I’ve ridden on separated bike lanes that were so dangerous I opted to use the main road and still felt safer with people trying to run me off the road honking and screaming at me. I’ve ridden on highly regarded bike paths that are so poorly maintained trees are growing out of them, so poorly lighted that collisions are unavoidable, and mixed traffic with pedestrians in a way that makes tangling with cars feel a lot safer.
I know, I’m in the minority on this. But even after serious injuries in a bike accident sharing the road with cars… that still feels safer to me.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#240I live in a master planned community (Daybreak, Utah), and while you can definitely scoff at the building quality (state of things everywhere right now, it's all done fast and with low quality materials), it's been fantastic, especially during the pandemic. The whole neighborhood is designed to be walkable, with parks, pools, trails, train stations, grocery stores and restaurants (added in the later phases, which are…
I know I’m an outlier but, in a city I feel generally safer riding on the road in traffic than on dedicated lanes and paths. In traffic with cars, everyone knows the rules, has the opportunity to see and use signals, and has regulated safety standards. I’ve ridden on separated bike lanes that were so dangerous I opted to use the main road and still felt safer with people trying to run me off the road honking and scre…
That said, I welcome communities without cars! And I definitely feel like those communities especially need dedicated bike routes to separate cyclists from pedestrians.